A video encoder compresses video information so that more information can be sent over a given bandwidth. The compressed signal may then be transmitted to a receiver having a decoder that decodes or decompresses the signal prior to display.
High Efficient Video Coding (HEVC) is the latest video compression standard, which is being developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) formed by ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG). Similar to previous video coding standards, HEVC includes basic functional modules such as intra/inter prediction, transform, quantization, in-loop filtering, and entropy coding.
As the standardization of the main part of HEVC is reaching completion, the study of Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension of HEVC has begun. SVC is a solution to cope with the heterogeneity of networks and devices in modern video service environments. An HEVC SVC bitstream contains several sub-bitstreams that can themselves be decoded, and these sub-bitstreams represent the source video content with different resolution, frame rate, quality/SNR, bit depth, and so forth. To achieve the various scalabilities, a multi-layered coding structure is often used. In general, multi-layered coding structure has one Base Layer (BL) and one or more Enhancement Layers (ELs). This structure permits a picture, or portions of a picture, belonging to an EL to be predicted from lower layer pictures (e.g., a BL picture or a lower level EL picture) or from previously coded pictures in the same layer.